In American professional soccer, more often than not we refer to him or her as "coach," the term originally meaning a tutor "carrying" a student through an exam. It's not really the right word. At the top level you assume a starting 11 do not require schooling on trapping, passing or kicking straight. Mr. So and So, the fiery high school coach - it was his job to teach the basic stuff.

Manager is a more accurate term for the pro-level. Stick "management" into the Google box and you get this - "to coordinate the efforts of people to accomplish goals and objectives using available resources efficiently and effectively."

In England, players say manager, or use substitutes such as gaffer or boss, a nod to authority - "You're benched, you're making me look bad, get the hell out of my office!" And naturally, if a player fails to respond to coordinating efforts, the boss yells, "You're fired!"

Not so fast with the big stick, chief. The age of the manager armed with the bollocking bullet is over. A manager who tears apart a locker room with savage scorn will not last long in the job. Players are powerful. Their agents will find them new employers if the manager treats them like ordure. Or the team rebels as a group forcing the business interests invested in the club to act and cast off the demented manager like Mr. Christian setting Captain Bligh adrift in "Mutiny on the Bounty." All that kissing the badge stuff that players do is the art of impression - "I love this team forever as long as I am forever happy."

A new manager in the job would be advised to bring to the office Dr. Freud's couch for the massaging of egos and a lasso to control the team's collective id, the primal urges seeking adulation, fast cars and sporting fashionable haircuts. A tough assignment for any brave soul in the age of the rampant pleasure principle - entertain us with wins and attractive football, satisfy the needs of the players, the fans and the accountants of the stockholders. Or you're fired! And no one buys a pint in the pub for an outcast.

Take the strange case of Paolo Di Canio, an Italian manager using the principles of Mussolini as his guide. Employed by English Premier League club Sunderland at the start of the season, he fell foul of the players by running a reign of terror that reportedly banned laughing and joking at training sessions. In the past, Di Canio was infamously photographed as a player giving the straight-arm salute to supporters of his Roman team, Lazio. His unbending will tanked Sunderland into the basement of the league. Players revolted, and Di Canio embarked on a train that ran on time, marked exit, don't come back.

But what do we make of the managerial elite? Sir Alex Ferguson, after his recent retirement from 27 years as boss at Manchester United, extended his prodigious knowledge of management to Harvard University's Business School, and this from a man who once kicked a cleat in anger, bloodying David Beckham's chiseled face. Or Jose Mourinho, Chelsea's current gaffer, a tactical genius so impressive that had he been alive 200 years ago, Napoleon's jealousy for the man's skill would have matched the Emperor's love for Josephine. Some guys have all the luck.

So, the manager - pillory him as a sucker for punishment, willing to risk humiliation and shame for the scent of vindication. And if he wins the battle, to be carried aloft by the players, rewarded by the stockholders, respected, even revered by the mob. Accomplish goals - now which striker to buy to make that happen?